Believe it or not, this morning I did a brief phone interview for our local radio station about this.

I'm not sure how helpful I was, because I don't know all that much about the 2012 phenomenon in particular. But I was able to say some anodyne things about fringe beliefs and apocalypticism in general.

Plus, I was able to point out that this is not the first time that the Mayan Calendar has prompted wild speculation. Back in the 1970s, when ancient astronauts were all the rage (along with the Bermuda Triangle), Allen and Sally Landsburg produced a book and a movie, The Outer Space Connection, in which they argued that the ancestors of the Maya had come from outer space, and would be returning to Earth on the day the Mayan Calendar turned over.

The problem was--I mean, aside from the problem of being batshit crazy--they got the date wrong. They thought the Space Maya would be returning to Earth on 24 December 2011.

THE Y1K CRISIS
By Ashleigh Brilliant (www.ashleighbrilliant.com) Canterbury, England. A.D. 999.
An atmosphere close to panic prevails today throughout Europe as the millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing with it the so-called "Y1K Bug," – a menace which, until recently, hardly anyone had ever heard of. Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric of Western Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations, could collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the problem.
Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise? Why did no one anticipate that a change from a three-digit to a four-digit year would throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical verse in which any date is mentioned? Every formulaic hymn, prayer, ceremony and incantation dealing with dated events will have to be re-written to accommodate three extra syllables. All tabular chronologies with three-space year columns, maintained for generations by scribes using carefully hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now have to be converted to four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the meantime, the validity of every official event, from baptisms to burials, from confirmations to coronations, may be called into question.
"We should have seen it coming," says Brother Cedric of St. Michael’s Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What worries me most is that ‘THOUSAND’ contains the word ‘THOU,’ which occurs in nearly all our prayers, and of course always refers to God. Using it now in the name of the year will seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause terrible confusion. Of course, we could always use Latin, but that might be even worse -- The Latin word for ‘Thousand’ is ‘Mille’ – which is the same as the Latin for ‘mile.’ We won’t know whether we’re talking about time or distance!"
Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together with its inevitable ripple effects, this alone could plunge the hitherto-stable medieval economy into chaos.
A conference of clerics has been called at Winchester to discuss the entire issue, but doomsayers are convinced that the matter is now one of personal survival. Many families, in expectation of the worst, are stocking up on holy water and indulgences.

If the apocalypse can destroy splodenode's creepy avatar once and for all, it will have all been worthwhile. That thing can't be destroyed with conventional weapons alone.

However, 3:11 AM Pacific Time? You can fuck right off, apocalypse.

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Says you; I still have a lot to live for. I'd take having to look at splodenode's avatar every day over a cataclysm happening tomorrow.

And I don't think it is a good idea to treat apocalypse rudely. Please refrain from doing so, to avoid jinxing things for everyone. Maybe if we're courteous, it will turn around and leave.

Besides, with that sort of attitude, the apocalypse would probably leave that avatar floating around as a wireless signal, where it will probably be intercepted by some unsuspecting spacecraft or distant planet.

So when's the next apocalypse anyway? The last two were Y2K and the real Y2K, now it's the Mayan Apocalypse, but what's next?

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I think we need to redefine the word "apocalypse."

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Can we please refrain from any Mayan calendar jokes until after December 21st has come and gone, so that we don't jinx things. I'll even make a deal: if nothing has happened by December 23rd, 12:00 pm, I'll make wisecracks with you all. But for now, I see this moment as a time of somber self-reflection.

I think now is a time to reflect on our selves, and to meditate on how we can improve ourselves and attain a greater peace, even if the next several hours were to be our last, and to think of reasons why God might find our civilization worthy to continue to advance unabated.

For those too thick to figure out that the world isn't ending in the next 24 hours (as opposed to those having fun with the meme, as we all do)... Well, the 144000-day Mayan calendar has ended twelve times previously (the one ending tomorrow is the 13th), & the world is still here... I'm gonna go out on a limb and say on December 22d the 14th calendar will start. just like a new western calendar starts every January 1st. And the changes between Julian and Gregorian calendars hadn't happened - but, then again, the whole "doomsday prophecy" thing was made up by a gold-digging German junkie in a trashy wannabe-Castaneda paperback in 1975. And not by the Mayans...

And I don't think it is a good idea to treat apocalypse rudely. Please refrain from doing so, to avoid jinxing things for everyone. Maybe if we're courteous, it will turn around and leave.

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Ah, shit! I knew that posting on TrekBBS was bad for me, but I had no idea. Hey everyone, sorry for the whole destroying the Earth and killing everyone you love thing by making a joke about sleeping in. My bad. Forgive me?